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Update on the Frost Giant King. Cheers to the recommendation on Bases to replace the GW base! I have a slew of baes now for my projects. Plus this base is so much better. I hope to add more embellishment like rocks to match the Queen after I get this chap sorted. So many smooth surfaces asking for textures. Leather texture after the inner cloak is done. The spear shaft wood.grain has to wait until the end as the butt of the spear continues to be worn off during painting. The sword will be a session work in-and-of itself. Enjoy!

"Hverir eru þeir tveir, er tíu hafa fætr, augu þrjú ok einn hala?" "Who are the two that on ten feet run Three eyes they have but only one tail." -Heithreksgatur ("The Riddling of Heithrek") Okay, if you haven't guessed by now I am a huge Old Norse geek. Point of fact, in the SCA (a medieval recreation group,) I have adapted a number of Norse poems and stories to fireside tales, and written my own things in Norse poetic styles. So when I saw there was a painting contest with a theme of Scandinavian, I really got to thinking. I don't really have any good Norse minis at the moment. I have "Fafnir of Kjord" from years ago - I'll get around to painting him eventually - but I don't have a burning desire to paint him right now and, honestly, he's more like "Fafhrd" from Fritz Leiber's "Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser series" than a true Viking - I'm sure this was intentional, but it wasn't really what I was looking for. So I kind of conceived this idea to convert two horse minis to Odin's eight legged horse - Sleipnir. I will probably do Odin also - adapting a wizard miniature to become Odin is not terribly hard... Tolkein based Gandalf on Odin, but I'm concentrating on the horse right now. My idea was to buy two Bones horses, carve them up, and make an eight legged horse. So one trip to my FLGS later, I had two "Silverhorn the Unicorns" in Bones. It will need some customization, but this will be a hell of a lot easier and cheaper in Bones. Here's a picture: From the side, I think there's plenty of room for an extra set of forelegs. Rear legs, though, may be problematic. I think I'll have to extend the body: First thing I did was some clean up on the mold lines and removed the horn and beard, like so: Next I did some feet repositioning. If I just remove the legs and paste them on as is, Sleipnir will have two sets of legs that match exactly. Fortunately, this is Bones - I cut one of the rear legs free, then I immersed it in hot water, held the legs in position, then immersed it in cold water. This is what will be the main body: The rear leg is repositioned only slightly, then glued back down. Let's call this figure A for simplicity's sake. This will be my source of extra legs, I decided to have one of the rear legs going back, otherwise the other legs are the same as standard: So this is Figure B. My next step will be cutting the front legs off of Figure B - I'm going to go all the way up through the muscle and will probably glue them right behind the existing forelegs. For the rear legs I think I'm going to trim the tail and some of the rear off of Figure A, and have Figure B extend that portion of the body out. I should be able to use GS to smooth out any harsh transitions. Comments, questions, and advice all welcome. This is definitely the biggest conversion I've done yet. Wish me luck!